Michael C. Finton, whose biggest crime had been a 1999 heist in which he swiped $323 and eight cartons of Marlboros, is in a lot of trouble now.

BRUCE RUSHTON

Michael C. Finton, whose biggest crime had been a 1999 heist in which he swiped $323 and eight cartons of Marlboros, is in a lot of trouble now.

Charged Thursday with attempting to blow up the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield with what he thought was a bomb, Finton, 29, faces a life sentence if convicted. Finton’s latest arrest, as well as one in Dallas on Thursday in an unrelated case, mark the latest in a series of prosecutions against alleged would-be terrorists whose partners in crime turned out to be FBI agents.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, dozens of people around the nation have been arrested and accused of conspiring with undercover FBI agents posed as bomb suppliers. In Finton’s case, the government had been watching him since 2007.

Authorities ultimately used an informant and an undercover agent to lure the Decatur man to Springfield, where Finton allegedly parked a van filled with fake explosives near the federal building, then called a number using a cell phone that he believed would detonate a bomb, prosecutors say.

In Dallas, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who drew FBI attention from postings he made on the Internet, was arrested Thursday, after he allegedly also parked a vehicle bearing a phony bomb under an office building.

Entrapment defense?

Jon Gray Noll, a Springfield criminal defense attorney, said he’s read the government’s criminal complaint against Finton and believes entrapment is Finton’s best defense. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

For starters, defendants who use entrapment have to admit to everything except intent, Noll said.

“It’s a very difficult defense to win,” Noll said. “But that’s the only horse he has to ride.”

Entrapment is a “pterodactyl” defense when it comes to terrorism cases, said Henry Klingeman, a New Jersey lawyer who used entrapment claims four years ago in an unsuccessful attempt to keep a British man out of prison who thought he was selling a shoulder-fired missile to terrorists targeting an airliner.

“My client wasn’t an ideologue,” Klingeman said. “He was an idiot.”

Courts no longer look at prior conduct when evaluating entrapment defenses, Klingeman said, and zealousness in agreeing to help with a terrorist plot can be sufficient for conviction. He said he knows of no instance in which an entrapment defense has proven successful in a terrorism case in which FBI agents or informants have posed as terrorists, and there have been dozens of such prosecutions.

“I’m sure in each one entrapment was a component,” Klingeman said.

Shannen Rossmiller, a former municipal judge in Montana turned terrorist hunter, said she’s now monitoring several suspicious people online. Assuming dozens of cyber-identities, Rossmiller has helped the FBI win convictions against Ryan G. Anderson, a former National Guard member who is serving a life sentence for trying to aid the enemy in Iraq, and Michael Reynolds, who got a 30-year sentence after Rossmiller encountered him on the Internet trying to find money to buy trucks to blow up oil pipelines.

“You and I would look at it and say, ‘How stupid do these guys have to be?’ ” Rossmiller said. “You have to look at it from their context. They all suffer from some form of narcissism.

“They all believe they’re called to a greater calling.”

Bruce Rushton can be reached at 788-1542. The Olney Daily Mail contributed to this report.